HP Microserver v VMWare workstation

[ebberz]

So I'm primarily looking to learn a lot more about VMware Vsphere v4.

My main question I guess is should I go out and buy a HP Proliant Microserver (which currently has £100 rebate) with the cut down iLO board, increase the RAM and add another HDD.

Or can I get away with just using a recent version of VMware Workstation which you can apparently load ESX on as a guest machine and go from there?

My main PC is an i7 860 with 4GB DDR3 RAM etc so more than able to cope with the load.
The benefits would be quite a lot of saving on extra parts but the downside is it wouldn't be a dedicated server and I possibly couldn't do as much with it if it as I could with a servers. Although given I probably won't be using anything higher than Enterprise edition it may not matter?

 

[mfenn]

A VM within a VM, sounds interesting, but not necessarily in a good way ESX has gotten much more lax on the hardware requirements, so if you just want to play, you can get any old i5 or i7 w/ Intel mobo (so you get the Intel NIC).

 

[ebberz]

Yeah it would be odd and then I'd build another VM within that VM. So a VM within a VM within a VM. Sounds perfect!

Guess I could try and install it direct on the PC and see how it goes.

 

[Morg.]

Yeah it would be odd and then I'd build another VM within that VM. So a VM within a VM within a VM. Sounds perfect!

Guess I could try and install it direct on the PC and see how it goes.

You'll need a very powerful sedative !

Also, careful with the virtual limbo